1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording/reproducing apparatus for recording information on a recording medium and reproducing information from such a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus using a magnetic tape as a recording medium, a variety of technologies have been developed for purposes of achieving higher density recording. In the information recording/reproducing technologies, a surface recording density of such a magnetic tape is expressed by a product of a recording density in a tape running direction of the magnetic tape (linear recording density) and a recording density in a width direction orthogonal to the tape running direction (track density). In this respect, a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus equipped with fixed magnetic heads such as a compact cassette deck, a digital compact cassette deck (hereinafter abbreviated as "DCC") or the like, generally has the number of magnetic heads equal to the number of tracks formed on a tape. It should be noted here that the number of magnetic heads refers to the number of combination heads, each of which is composed of a recording head and a reproducing head.
FIG. 1 illustrates a corresponding relationship between a magnetic head assembly of a DCC deck and recording tracks formed on a recording surface of a magnetic tape by the magnetic head assembly.
Referring specifically to FIG. 1, the magnetic head assembly of the DCC deck comprises a recording head section 6 and a reproducing head section 8. The recording surface of a magnetic tape 7 is divided into a sector A for recording digital data and a sector B for recording analog data. In this event, the sector B is provided for establishing compatibility with compact cassette tapes of analog recording scheme.
The recording head section 6 is provided with nine induction-type recording magnetic heads W0-W8 for recording information on the sector A of the recording tape 7.
The reproducing head section 8 in turn is provided with reproducing magnetic heads R0-R8 each for reading recorded information from associated one of recording tracks T0-T8. The magnetic recording heads W0-W8 each have a width .tau..sub.1 equal to 185 .mu.m, and are arranged at intervals of 195 .mu.m. With these magnetic heads W0-W8, the tracks T0-T8 having the same width as the above-mentioned width .tau..sub.1, i.e., 185 .mu.m, and a track width equal to 195 .mu.m are formed on the sector A of the magnetic tape 7, as illustrated in FIG. 1. On the other hand, the magnetic heads R0-R8 in the reproducing head section 8 each have a width .tau..sub.2 equal to 70 .mu.m, and are arranged at intervals of 195 .mu.m.
As will be appreciated from the foregoing, each of the reproducing magnetic heads R0-R8 has the width .tau..sub.2 narrower than the track width .tau..sub.1. This configuration enables correct information to be reproduced from the respective tracks even if the center positions of the respective reproducing magnetic heads R0-R9 are slightly shifted in the tape width direction with respect to the center positions of the respective recording tracks T0-T8.
For example, even if the reproducing magnetic head R0 has its center position shifted by (.tau..sub.1 -.tau..sub.2)/2 in the tape width direction with respect to the center position of the recording track T0, this reproducing magnetic head R0 does trace on the recording track T0. Therefore, when the magnetic tape 7 is simply provided with a tape running guide such that a relative positional shift between each reproducing magnetic head and each recording track associated therewith is not more than the above-mentioned (.tau..sub.1 -.tau..sub.2)/2, correct information can be reproduced from each recording track without conducting tracking servo.
When the number of recording tracks recorded on the magnetic tape 7 is to be increased, the width .tau..sub.1 of each recording magnetic head is reduced to correspondingly increase the number of recording tracks. However, as each recording magnetic head is narrower and the width of each recording track formed thereby is correspondingly narrower, relative alignment of respective reproducing magnetic heads with associated recording tracks becomes difficult only by the use of the tape running guide, thus resulting in track shifts.
Thus, the magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus equipped with fixed recording heads, such as the DCC deck cited above, have a problem that the number of recording tracks cannot be arbitrarily increased as desired.